Félix Dolci

Dolci during the still rings apparatus final at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics where he was winning the silver medal.

Dolci suffered a shoulder injury at the start of 2018 which made it difficult to do high bar, pommel horse, and parallel bars. Because of this, he was not able to compete his best at the Élite Canada competition in February and ended up in fourth place in the all-around[5]. Dolci recovered and in April he went to the Pacific Rim Championships in Medellin, Colombia.[6] He placed 2nd as a team, 2nd on rings, 4th on parallel bars, and 8th on high bar[2]. He then moved on to the Canadian Championships held in Waterloo, Ontario and placed 1st on all-around, floor, vault, and high bar; 2nd on rings; 3rd on parallel bars; and 4th on pommel horse. Dolci's second international competition of the year came in June at the Junior Pan American Gymnastics Championships in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he won gold on rings and bronze in all-around, floor, high bar, and as a team[7]. In October, Dolci was back in Buenos Aires for the Youth Olympic Games. He placed 2nd on rings, 6th on floor, 7th on vault, 8th on high bar, and 9th in the all-around[8]. His silver made him the first Canadian gymnast to win a medal at the Youth Olympics[3]. He rounded out the year with the Austrian Future Cup in Linz, Austria in November [9]. He dominated the competition, placing first on every event (including team and all-around) except high bar, where he received the bronze medal.[2]

Dolci started 2019 off in February with the Canada Games in Red Deer, Alberta. Competing in the junior competition, he won gold in all-around, high bar, vault, and floor; silver on rings and as the Québec team; and finished in 8th on pommel horse[3]. This achievement made him the most decorated athlete in the Canada Games for a single year[3]. Dolci then went to University of Calgary International Cup (UCIC) in Calgary, Alberta in March[10]. He placed 1st on pommel horse, rings, and parallel bars, and got 6th on high bar[2]. In May, he went to the Canadian Championships in Ottawa, Ontario. There he received the gold medal in all events excluding vault and pommel horse where he placed 2nd and 4th, respectively.[3]

Dolci winning the gold medal on still rings at the 2019 Junior World Artistic Gymnastics Championships.

At the end of June, Dolci went to Győr, Hungary to compete in the 1st Junior World Gymnastics Championships. The first day of competition was the qualification for the event finals, team final, and all-around final in one.[11]. Along with Ioannis Chronopoulos and Evgeny Siminiuc, Dolci helped Canada place fifth as a team with a combined total of 158.563, just over 0.6 behind 3rd place Italy. Since only the top 2 scores on each event counted, so Dolci contributed on every event except pommel horse[11]. His all-around score was not quite enough though, as he received a 79.731 which was around 0.5 behind the bronze medalist, Ukraine's Illia Kovtun[11]. Dolci qualified for 2 event finals: floor (in third) and rings (in second)[12]. He also qualified in first on vault with a score of 14.533, but only competed one vault so he wasn't part of the final as you have to perform 2 separate vaults to qualify. Dolci finished 2nd in the floor final with a 14.000, only 0.166 behind South Korea's Ryu Sung-hyun. In the same day, he went on to the rings final with a 13.600, winning the event by 0.1 ahead of silver medalist Diogo Soares of Brazil[11]. In both of the finals that Dolci was part of, he had the highest execution scores out of all of the 8 gymnasts part of the final.[11]